Announcing PHLO - A whole new way of integrating communications into your application

Developers innovate at a fast pace. Enabling communication in applications shouldn’t be any different. Today we are really excited to announce the Public Beta of PHLO (Plivo High Level Objects) - A whole new visual way of integrating communications that would empower developers to design collaboratively, build visually and deploy instantly.

Pre-built use case templates with option to add custom code

100% functional parity with Plivo API & XML

Serverless architecture, hosted on Plivo infrastructure

Offered for free, regardless of scale

Why it Matters ?

Although communication APIs have simplified the notorious complexity of telecom, building communication capabilities into business applications is still an intensive process for a developer. We felt there are steps in development pipeline (like extensive documentation reference, asynchronous collaboration, testing multiple iterations, deployment steps and code-intensive maintenance) that could be simplified for faster outcomes. This was the trigger for creating PHLO.

The What, Why & How of PHLO

In essence, PHLO is a completely visual drag-and-drop approach to building communication apps. It lets you build applications by connecting together graphical components in much the same way you’d piece together Legos.

PHLO eliminates the need to keep referring back to the documentation when building apps. Building with PHLO is visual & intuitive. There is still text-based help available, and it’s all within main workspace.

With PHLO, Phone Menus, Prompts, SMS Menus, Conference Bridges, Call Forwarding, SMS Notifications - everything is a Component now. These Components, pre-packaged as templates, drastically reduce the lines of code required to create custom business logic. PHLO works seamlessly with all your programming languages and is prepackaged within Plivo Server-Side SDKs. You can still add your own custom code and create the unique communication application that’s relevant for your business — now with 80% less coding.

Unlike visual application builders that only automate simple workflows for a limited set of use cases, PHLO introduces 100% functional parity with Plivo API & XML set, enabling all use-cases from simple ones like Order Notifications to complex ones like a fully-featured Call Center. PHLO also simplifies the integration and deployment pipeline so that you can ship more, faster.

PHLO runs on Plivo’s cloud infrastructure. This lets you focus on your actual business use case, rather than worrying about all the stuff under the hood - such as setting up a server and writing the code for routing and API calls.

Getting Started with PHLO

The best way to get started with PHLO is to Sign Up and create your first PHLO. PHLO has everything you need to create your app in minutes. We’ve also put together a collection of use-case video tutorials to get you started quickly.

One Last Thing — the Pricing :)

At Plivo, our aim has always been to simplify integrating communications for developers. Developers have the power to create and sometimes, all we need to do is to unblock things for them so that they can change the world. That’s why, in addition to bringing in 100% Plivo-API support out-of-the-box, we are also making it FREE to build using PHLO. This is not just a commercial decision. This is our stake in the ground — as we truly believe this is how the communication capabilities of the future will be built.

Sign up and start building with for PHLO today - and let us know what you think!